Welcome 2009!!!! Welcome Change! Welcome a harvest long sought and fought for। Welcome an attitude of hope. Welcome partners in my publisher, lawyer, new Family Coven members! Welcome all those who I hope to meet, share sacred space with and learn from during my travels and personal appearances! Welcome to you who are just coming to my site and getting know me....

I have been struck by the immense feeling of change and hope that seems to cling to the air clashing with the clamor of busyness, pressure and stress. So many of my Family Coven Brothers and Sisters are not sad in the least to see 2008 go and embrace a new year with the hope and possibility that seems to have been kept from us since Samhain.

Maybe it is the teenager – my ghost of maidenhood – that has possessed me forcing me to recall a young southern girl checking out the speeches and sermons of the Rev. Martin Luther King, then reading them in secret, hiding the book in a binder and finding within his words a world of possibility, justice and equality.
Maybe watching a civil rights advocate live long enough to see King’s dream fulfilled and participate on the historic day when the view of our Chief is suddenly no longer a white man like it has been forty-four times before, returned to me that innocent hope that seems to have gotten lost covered by the noise and static of a life lived। Maybe Joseph Lowery stirred in me a belief that it is possible for different faiths to find common ground.
And now, Lord, in the complex arena of human relations, help us to make choices on the side of love, not hate; on the side of inclusion, not exclusion; tolerance, not intolerance।
And as we leave this mountaintop, help us to hold onto the spirit of fellowship and the oneness of our family। Let us take that power back to our homes, our workplaces, our churches, our temples, our mosques or wherever we seek your will.

Love, not hate.
On the side of inclusion, not exclusion.
Tolerance, not intolerance.
Let us take that power back to our homes.

For five long years I have researched, studied and written to try to bring about the idea that HOME is where the power, tolerance, love, inclusion and spirituality come from। Strong spiritual families make strong spiritual communities and birth a peaceful nation। In a religion that has been built and maintained, in all gratefulness and respect, by solitaires and adult oriented covens; it is the family that is our future. Gardner claimed we were born at the kitchen table and now we have spiraled back to that table to find the spiritual plug block that seemingly unsatiated place in our hearts.

President Obama had already noted the need and power within our homes when he said:
For as much as government can do and must do, it is ultimately the faith and determination of the American people upon which this nation relies. It is the kindness to take in a stranger when the levees break, the selflessness of workers who would rather cut their hours than see a friend lose their job which sees us through our darkest hours। It is the firefighter's courage to storm a stairway filled with smoke, but also a parent's willingness to nurture a child, that finally decides our fate.

Perhaps it is as President Obama suggested our country and, especially neopagans and Wiccans, are still young and we teeter like a child learning to walk, finding out the lessons only exploration, trial and error can bring us.

I am awed by the moment in history and time we stand upon. The brink of change for the country I love and the faith I am devoted to. As I work late into the night, I feel blessedly stressed. At five-years-old, I wanted to write. At ten, I wanted to write. At fifteen, I wanted to write. Here I am at 4:30 AM, a mild 37 years, writing while my son lays safely in his bed and my Husband Priest rests from providing me the opportunity no one else ever gave me: a chance to prove I could apply my will with hard work, perseverance and the gift of free speech, I could write. Suddenly, the ills, hardships and short-comings of this nation seems to pale in comparison to my blessed stress.